Denmark's Frederiksborg Castle, the largest Renaissance castle in Scandinavia, appears here in a dramatically moonlit view. The moon is hidden behind the trees, but its reflection sparkles in the castle's windows and in the artificial lake in the foreground. The castle was a favorite subject of the young landscape painter Johan Christian Dahl.

 

This vibrant bouquet of spring blossoms is François Lepage’s great masterpiece. An influential member of the Lyon School of floral painting, Lepage was praised by his contemporaries for his highly realistic technique that drew inspiration from the 17th-century Dutch still-life tradition.

Windows belongs to the second phase of Josef Albers’ sandblasted flashed glass production, which began around 1929. Likely inspired by photography, he reduced his palette to white, gray, and black tones. Albers started with black flashed glass (a sheet of opaque white glass coated with a thin layer of black glass) onto which he sandblasted his design.

Josef Albers was the longest-serving member of the Bauhaus, a progressive German school active from 1919 to 1933 that sought to combine art, design, and architecture. Albers’ early career at the Bauhaus was shaped by his intense exploration of the material and aesthetic qualities of glass.